Foreign Accent, Comprehensibility, and Intelligibility in the Speech of Second Language Learners

Abstract

This study examines the interrelationships among accentedness, perceived comprehensibility, and intelligi bility in the speech of L2 learners. Eighteen native speak ers (NSs) of English listened to excerpts of extemporaneous English speech produced by 10 Mandarin NSs and two English NSs. We asked the listeners to transcribe the utterances in standard orthography and to rate them for degree of foreign‐accentedness and comprehensibility on 9‐ point scales. We assigned the transcriptions intelligibility scores on the basis of exact word matches. Although the utterances tended to be highly intelligible and highly rated for comprehensibility, the accent judgment scores ranged widely, with a noteworthy proportion of scores at the “heavily‐accented” end of the scale. We calculated Pearson correlations for each listener's intelligibility, accentedness, and comprehensibility scores and the phonetic, phonemic, and grammatical errors in the stimuli, as well as goodness of intonation ratings. Most listeners showed significant correlations between accentedness and errors, fewer lis teners showed correlations between accentedness and per ceived comprehensibility, and fewer still showed a rela tionship between accentedness and intelligibility. The findings suggest that although strength of foreign accent is correlated with perceived comprehensibility and intelligibility, a strong foreign accent does not necessarily reduce the comprehensibility or intelligibility of L2 speech.